Doctor Appointments Every doctor has a certain number of appointments each day that are available for booking in advance, these appointments are 8:30 – 9:20 and in addition they each have 3 or 4 appointments available in the afternoon for pre-booking if they are working in the afternoon. These appointments can usually be booked up to a month in advance, however we would stress that these appointments do go very quickly so if you need to pre-book an early morning or afternoon appointment we would advise you book well in advance (especially if you want to see a particular doctor). The surgery will also be open in the evening from 6.30-8.00pm on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and on Saturday morning for pre-booked appointments with a doctor. These appointments will be available for booking up to a month in advance BUT they must be pre-booked (before 6.30pm on the day of the appointment for evening appointments and before 6.30pm on a Friday for the Saturday appointments).

All the remaining doctors appointments are available for booking (for that day only) from 8:30 in the morning.

We will always try to book you an appointment with your own doctor, but this may not always be possible, in which case we will offer you an appointment with another doctor.

Inevitably there will come a time at some point during the day that we find that we have no free appointments left to offer. This does not mean that you cannot see a doctor, but it does mean that the receptionist cannot book an appointment for that day without speaking to the doctor first. In this case, the receptionist will take your details and ask a doctor to contact you directly, the doctor will phone you back and may book you an appointment where appropriate. You may hear us refer to this as “Triage”

We are a large practice with over 15,000 patients, and our telephones are extremely busy first thing in the morning, for this reason you may not always get through on the first attempt. We recognise this may be a problem, and have made every effort to minimise the inconvenience by having more receptionists available at this time to answer the phones, please be patient, as your call will be answered as soon as a receptionist becomes available.

We do not recommend that you “press 5” (BT ring back service) as it does not work very well when there are a large volume of calls coming through the switchboard at the same time.

Medicals and Postnatal examinations should be booked in advance, so please tell the receptionist if you need to book either of these as we follow separate guidelines for these types of appointments.

Practice Nurse appointments should always be booked in advance as these clinics get very booked up so please allow plenty of time (you may usually book up to a month ahead)

Telephone consultations: It may not always be necessary to see a doctor face to face. The receptionist may ask you if you think you have a problem that could be dealt with over the phone (rather than coming to the surgery) If you think that a telephone consultation would be sufficient, the receptionist, will take your details and ask your doctor to phone you back. If having spoken to you, the doctor needs to examine you he/she will arrange the appointment.

If there is anything that we have not covered in this information sheet, that you are still unsure about, please ask the receptionists who will try to answer any questions you may have.